[CPEO-BIF] Rocky Mountain West

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

In The New West magazine
 From Rubble to Riches: Western Communities Capitalize on Cleanups

By Matthew Frank, 2-14-08
The New West magazine (MT)
February 14, 2008
   	

Missoula's affable Mayor John Engen calls it an unsavory part of town, a 
place that "deadens community energy" and enables vandalism and crime. 
Bad stuff happens to people there -- "That's where I first learned to 
drink Sterno," he quips.

The former Champion Sawmill site is maybe a minute's float down the 
Clark Fork River from vibrant downtown Missoula, a fenced in and 
desolate 46 acres. On a still December day the dregs of demolition 
remain, blanketed by snow. Broken concrete, twisted rebar, graffiti, 
rusted machines frozen in the ground and in time, artifacts of a 
once-thriving timber industry.

Today, nearly 100 years after the mill first opened for business and 
about 15 years since it was finally abandoned, a propitious recipe of 
rising land values, forward-thinking local government, community-minded 
developers, and some financial gymnastics mixed with grants from the 
Environmental Protection Agency is working to turn this symbol of the 
Old West into the New: the blight will give rise to a mixed-use 
development in the heart of town, called The Old Sawmill District.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.newwest.net/magazine/article/from_rubble_to_riches_western_communities_capitalize_on_cleanups/C555/L555/

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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